"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the
animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel
nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest
lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, (1722-1803)

Monday, January 31, 2011

Foxy News: The Cable News Home For Sexism, Scantily Clad Women Recently, Fox & Friends' hosts and guests have made a series of sexist comments to and about women. Indeed, Fox & Friends has a long history of sexism which also permeates throughout Fox News and mirrors a culture at parent company News Corp that has led to numerous sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits. Read More

Gaffney Still Fearmongering About Sharia In U.S. On Fox News' Fox & Friends, right-wing pundit and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney baselessly claimed that "Muslim Brotherhood front organizations" are influencing the U.S. government and are pushing "subversive techniques" to impose Sharia law in the U.S. Gaffney has a history of using Fox News to push his conspiracy theories about Sharia law. Read More

Right-Wing Media Claim Obama "Lost Egypt," But Can't Agree On Why Right-wing media outlets have begun claiming that President Obama has "lost Egypt" due to his reaction to the unrest in that country. But they do not agree on whether Obama lost Egypt because he is too supportive of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, is not supportive enough, or is doing something else wrong. Read More

Credibility Coup De Grace: GOP Activist Adams To Speak At CPAC While the right-wing media have declared former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams a "whistle-blower" for his claims that the department's handling of the New Black Panthers case constitutes racially charged corruption, it has long been clear that Adams has an extensive history of GOP activism. In the final blow to any claim that Adams is neutral or impartial, Adams is scheduled to appear as a panelist during next month's CPAC, the conservative activist convention. Read More

Sunday, January 30, 2011

ANY lingering doubts about Barack Obama’s determination to appropriate Ronald Reagan’s political spirit evaporated just before the State of the Union. No American brand is more associated with Reagan than General Electric, and it was that corporation’s chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, who popped up as the president’s new wingman when the White House rolled out its latest jobs initiative on Jan. 21. Obama’s speech on Tuesday, with its celebration of the nation’s can-do capitalist ingenuity, moved him still closer to Reagan’s sweet spot as a national cheerleader. The president even offered a remix of the old Reagan-era G.E. jingle “We bring good things to life” — now traded up to the grander “We do big things.”

Obama’s rhetorical Morning in America is exquisitely timed to coincide with the Gipper’s centennial — and, of course, the unacknowledged start of his own 2012 re-election campaign. It’s remarkable how completely the G.O.P. has ceded the optimism of its patron saint to the president just as the country prepares for a deluge of Reaganiana. Obama’s post-New Year’s surge past a 50 percent approval rating — well ahead of both Reagan’s and Bill Clinton’s comeback trajectories after their respective midterm shellackings — may have only just begun.

There was no drama to Obama’s address — just a unifying theme, at long last, as he reasserted the role of government in rebooting and rebuilding the country for a new century and putting Americans back to work. The president wisely left any theatrics to his adversaries, and, as always, they were happy to oblige.

This time we were spared a “You lie!” But once Obama segued into a rambling laundry list and the “prom night” bipartisan photo ops lost their comic novelty, the night’s storyline inevitably shifted to the reliable diva antics of Michele Bachmann, the founder of the House’s Tea Party Caucus. For all the Republican male establishment’s harrumphing, it couldn’t derail her plan to hijack the party’s designated State of the Union response with one of her own. More Katherine Harris than Sarah Palin, Bachmann is far more riveting television bait than Paul Ryan, the bland congressman officially assigned the Bobby Jindal memorial slot after the New Jersey governor Chris Christie was savvy enough to take a pass.

What were they all afraid of? The answer cuts to the crux of the right’s plight less than three months after its supposed restoration. Having sold itself in 2010 as the uncompromising champion of Tea Party-fueled fiscal austerity, the enhanced G.O.P. caucus arrived in Washington in 2011 to discover that most Americans prefer compromise to confrontation and favor balanced budgets in name only.

A CNN poll this month found that just one American in five regards deficit reduction as pressing enough to justify cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Only one in four would choose balancing the budget if it meant reducing education programs. Indeed, a new Gallup poll reveals that there’s exactly one category of government spending that a majority of voters favors slicing — foreign aid (which amounts to some 1 percent of the budget). Incredible as it sounds, even current government outlays to science, the arts, farmers and antipoverty programs still enjoy 50 percent-plus support.

Bachmann, like such other newly empowered Tea Party tribunes as Rand Paul and Jim DeMint, rattles G.O.P. leaders because she doesn’t pull punches in specifying how she would wield an ax. The only public opinion she cares about is that of her base. But as it turned out, Bachmann specified no cuts on Tuesday night, if only because she was too busy attacking Obama with unreconstructed pre-Tucson vitriol. In the end, her substance differed little from Ryan’s. She chastised government spending six times (vs. Ryan’s 13), and, like him, mentioned the twin federal money pits — Social Security and Medicare — not once. For a night anyway, these G.O.P. fiscal hawks were actually less forthright about entitlements than the Democratic president, who at least paid lip service to someday finding “a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security.”

This couldn’t last — and didn’t. Within 48 hours, other congressional Republicans were filling in some of the blanks left by Bachmann and Ryan, from privatizing Medicare to eliminating the government agency that regulates product safety. Perhaps the fresh crop of G.O.P. revolutionaries has been too busy revisiting 1776 to study the history of Newt Gingrich’s swaggering revolution of 1995. In January of that year, 49 percent of Americans approved and 22 percent opposed the incoming Republican Congress’s plans, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll at the time. But as soon as the plans’ details emerged, those numbers started to flip. By October 35 percent approved of G.O.P. policies and 45 percent did not. That was a month before the first of the two government shutdowns that put Clinton back on top.

But in 2011, it’s not just the revelation of cuts to specific popular programs that threatens to turn Americans against the Republican Congress. New polls show that Americans don’t even buy the principles behind these specifics. To hear the G.O.P. wail about it, you’d think the entire country was obsessed with the federal debt — cited 12 times in Ryan’s under-11-minute speech. But only 18 percent of Americans chose the deficit as a top priority for Washington in the most recent NBC/Journal survey and only 14 percent did in the New York Times/CBS News poll. Job creation was by far the top choice — at 43 percent (Times/CBS) and 34 percent (NBC/Journal).

Health care was a low-ranked priority too in those polls. And for all the right’s apocalyptic rants about the national horror of “Obamacare,” most polls continue to show that Americans are evenly divided about the law and that only a small minority favors its complete repeal (only one in four Americans in the latest Associated Press/GfK survey). The surest indicator that voters are not as inflamed about either the deficit or “Obamacare” as the right keeps claiming can be found in Karl Rove’s Wall Street Journal musings. To argue that Americans share his two obsessions, Rove now is reduced to citing polls from either Fox or a Brand X called Resurgent Republic, which he helpfully identifies as “a group I helped form.”

Obama must be laughing about how the party that spent a year hammering him for focusing on health care over jobs is now committing the same supposed sin. And one can only imagine his astonishment on Tuesday night, when the G.O.P. respondents to his speech each played Jimmy Carter to his Reagan by offering a grim double-feature of malaise and American decline. Hardly had the president extolled record corporate profits and a soaring stock market in his selectively rosy spin on the economy, than Ryan, who has the television manner of a solicitous funeral home director, was darkly warning that America could be the next Greece. Bachmann channeled Glenn Beck to argue that we are living in a nascent police state where government “tells us which light bulbs to buy” (G.E.’s, presumably).

The most revealing moment in either Republican response, though, came from Ryan, who, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, implicitly threatened another government shutdown, or catastrophic fiscal meltdown, if the House majority doesn’t get its way. “The president is now urging Congress to increase the debt limit,” he said with distaste, referring to the vote required possibly as soon as March to allow the Treasury to keep paying its bills. Should the House majority hold that vote hostage to its vision of the budget, it will throw the markets into turmoil and upend our still-embryonic recovery.

It tells you all you need to know about Ryan’s tilt to the right that, for all his professed disapproval of increasing the debt limit during an Obama administration, he voted to do sotwice himself during the gushing deficits of the Bush years. Funny he didn’t mention that Tuesday night. It tells you all you need to know about the G.O.P.’s overall tilt to the right that not just the Tea Party is making barely veiled threats to play dangerous political games with the debt limit. Mitch McConnell and Cantor did so last weekend, as have a plethora of potential 2012 presidential candidates, from Tim Pawlenty to Gingrich. The Bachmann-Beck-Palin tail is now firmly wagging the Republican dog.

Like virtually every other week since the shellacking, the State of the Union week was another salutary one for Obama. But the state of the union itself could yet be in the hands of radicals whose eagerness to see the president fail is outstripped only by their zeal to make an ideological point, even if it forces America into default.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Arizona Cardinals - The Owner is a crook and they come from a racists State. God hates them.

Atlanta Falcons - If you have ever seen the Housewives(Jezebels)of Atlanta you have seen why the Falcons are cursed, they play in the Bible Belt and the Falcons are committing Sin by playing on Sunday.

Buffalo Bills - They had 4 consecutive chances to win a Super Bowl and failed they are possessed by Satan and that is a fact. Buffalo Wings will be the Only thing that will be a Winner at a Super Bowl.

Cleveland Browns & Cincinnati Bengals - Both are cursed from being in Ohio where being Stupid,Fat,and Drunk are the good qualities of Ohio.

Carolina Panthers - They are located in the second Largest Banking Area in the USA, Den of Satan is their Alter. God Hates them.

Detroit Lions - Devils Night has taken away any chance of them being a Champion. The City is a shit hole and it reflects onto that team. The only thing the Detroit Lions are good for is smuggling dope to other cities across the country.

Jacksonville Jaguars - They are located in the Redneck Abyss of Alabama/Florida where a man that can burp/recite Psalm 23 is a Celebrity. God is not pleased with this.

San Diego Chargers - Their Uniforms are Gay and San Diego is Anti-Gay and very Right-Wing. Nothing good will ever come out of that Unholy Union.Teams that Will Never Win Another Super Bowl and Why

Oakland Raiders - Al Davis has forgot how to win and sabotages any chance they have.

Denver Broncos - John Elway was only a good Player because he had good coaches telling him what to do , He is in-charge now and is to stupid to be the big boss.

Washington Redskins - Owned by a Spoiled, Rich, Nerd, and the Players will never do anything but take his money and move on to another team. It's like a paid vacation for them.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Wash. Times Misrepresents Glacier Study To Attack Global Warming ScienceThe Washington Times attacked global warming science by citing a recent study that showed some Himalayan glaciers are stable or expanding. But the study did not cast doubt on global warming, as the study's lead author noted, "Overall in the Himalayas, the glaciers are retreating," while the ones that weren't were protected by a shield of debris; additionally, other studies have showed that glaciers are melting all over the world. Read More

Who is Fox's Latest Global Warming Expert Brian Sussman? As Media Matters has previously noted, recently Fox & Friends presented right-wing radio host Brian Sussman as a climate expert so that he could peddle misinformation to cast doubt on global warming. However, Sussman, a former radio show meteorologist, has a history of making inflammatory comments and is a frequent promoter of "birther" and other conspiracy theories. Read More

Varney Fearmongers About Social Security's Solvency On Fox & Friends, Fox Business host Stuart Varney bizarrely claimed that the Social Security "trust fund is empty" because it "is full of IOUs from the Treasury" that won't be "IOUs any longer, by the year 2037." In fact, without any changes, Social Security will be fully funded through 2037, and the trust fund holds a $2.5 trillion surplus, funded by Treasury bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government and are widely considered to be the safest investment around. Read More

Right-Wing Civil Rights Commission Trumps Up Report On Phony New Black Panther Party Scandal On January 27, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission released a report on the Department of Justice's investigation into the New Black Panther Party case. USCCR's report largely adopts the right-wing media's bogus allegations that President Obama's Justice Department engaged in racially charged corruption in the case. This is unsurprising; the USCCR is dominated by conservative activists, and the witnesses they rely upon are J. Christian Adams, a longtime GOP activist deeply tied to the Bush-era politicization of the DOJ, and Christopher Coates, who reportedly became "a true member of the team" during that administration. Read More

WSJ Falsely Claims Cap And Trade Is An "Economy Killer" In her Wall Street Journal column, Kimberly Strassel claimed "the public now understands that cap and trade is an economy killer." In fact, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the cap and trade bill passed by the House in 2009 would have had a "modest" impact on GDP and "only a small effect on total employment in the long run." Read More

"Taking Liberties," Indeed: Fox Presents Parental Dispute As Battle Over Religious Freedom Fox News has debuted a new segment called "Taking Liberties" in which it purports to investigate "challenges to the individual's constitutional rights." In its first installment, Fox took the side of a right-wing activist group that is representing a mother in a divorce dispute, repeating its false claim that she was deemed "too religious" to home-school her daughter; Fox all but ignored the father's side of the case. Read More

WASHINGTON – Tea party hero Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) this week proposed a blueprint to eliminate $400 billion from the federal budget, which included billions in cuts to veterans' health care and disability benefits.

Her plan would freeze health care funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and slash $4.5 billion in disability benefits to military veterans.

Bachmann posted the document on her official Web site, calling the spending cuts "real and necessary" to avoid increasing the debt ceiling above $14.3 trillion. She supports the United States wars in Iraq and Afghanistan......................................

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Fox Tries To Debunk Global Warming, Fails Miserably In an article titled, "Five Reasons the Planet May Not Be Its Hottest Ever," FoxNews.com sought to debunk the fact that Earth has warmed over the past 30 years, as well as the notion that human activity has contributed to the warming. But Fox largely ignored climate science and botched basic facts in the article, portions of which "are utter nonsense" and "do not make sense" according to climatologists consulted by Media Matters, including one of the skeptics cited by Fox. Read More

Broken Record: Fox Still Falsely Claiming That Snow Disproves Global Warming During their recent coverage of winter storms, Fox News has repeatedly mocked former Vice President Al Gore and cited the cold and snowy weather to attempt to discredit global warming. Fox News and other right-wing media routinely use snow to cast doubt on global warming, and internal emails from Fox News' Washington bureau show that in the past Fox employees have been instructed to question climate science. Read More

Right-Wing Media Revive Myth That Health Care Waivers Are Political Favors Following the announcement that additional companies have received waivers from one provision of the health care reform law, right-wing media have claimed that the Obama administration is granting the waivers as political favors. In fact, many of the waivers, which are temporary, have been given to companies in industries that opposed the law. Read More

When the Obama administration first decided it would rescue the U.S. automakers General Motors and Chrysler, Republicans exploded with warnings that such a move would be an inevitable failure, if not the beginning of the end of capitalism. Here are some examples:

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ): “We should have let them go into bankruptcy, emerge and become viable corporations again. The unions didn’t want to have their very generous contracts renegotiated, so we put $80 billion into both General Motors and Chrysler, and anybody believes that Chrysler is going to survive, I’d like to meet them.” [11/19/2009]

SEN. JIM DEMINT (R-SC): “The government has forced taxpayers to buy these failing companies without any plausible plan for profitability.” [06/01/2009]

REP. PAUL BROUN (R-GA): “This is an unprecedented takeover from the private sector by this administration…It is totally unconstitutional, it’s totally against freedom, it’s totally unprecedented, and it’s exactly the same thing that Hugo Chávez is doing down in Venezuela.” [06/09/2009]

REP. TRENT FRANKS (R-AZ): When Washington gets involved in a company, “the disaster that follows is predictable.” [07/22/2009]REP. LAMAR SMITH (R-TX): The government-led bankruptcy reorganizations of the companies “have been the leading edge of the Obama administration’s war on capitalism.” [7/22/2009]

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN): “I’m very concerned again about these motor takeovers from the federal government…We have a gangster government when the federal government has set up a new cartel and private businesses now have to go begging with their hand out.” [06/09/2009]

Aside from the obvious continued existence of capitalism, reality has revealed a very different tale, as The Hill outlined today:

The smallest of the Big Three U.S. automakers appears poised for a comeback less than two years after the government saved it from extinction. Chrysler made a $569 million net profit last year and has $10 billion in hand. It is adding jobs in the U.S. and slowly countering impressions in Washington and elsewhere that it can’t survive. “Over the course of the last 12 months, we’ve raised our outlook significantly,” said George Magliano, senior auto analyst for IHS Global Insight. “Their whole tone has changed over the last six to eight months.”

Of course, Republicans made similar claims about the rescue of GM, saying that it was the “road to socialism.” According to the Center for Automotive Research, “if the government had not invested in the automotive industry, up to 80,000 automotive jobs would have been lost…Once Chrysler and GM emerged from their ‘orderly’ bankruptcies, the growth of automotive sector employment has been strong, with 52,900 workers added since July 2009. Had GM and Chrysler not successfully emerged, those jobs would have been permanently lost.”

Last week, California State Sen. Leland Yee (D) called on right-wing hate radio host Rush Limbaugh to apologize for mocking Chinese President Hu Jintao and the Chinese language by speaking gibberish “ching chong chang” Chinese on his radio program. Yee, who is Chinese-American and chairs the state Senate Select Committee on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs, said Limbaugh owes the Chinese-American community an apology for his “pointless and ugly offense.” Naturally, Limbaugh did not apologize, and instead railed against Yee the following day on his radio, calling him out repeatedly by name.

Yee’s call for civility did not sit well with one Limbaugh fan, who responded by sending several racist death threats to Yee’s office this week. “Rush Limbaugh will kick your chink ass and expose you for the fool you are,” the faxes read, threatening him with “death” (warning, contains racial expletives):

As the San Francisco Chronicle notes, “The faxes include a drawing of a U.S. flag-adorned pickup truck towing a noose that is looped around what appears to be a caricature head of President Barack Obama.”

The faxes contained “similar graphics and language” as faxes Yee received in April, after he sought to expose how much former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) was being paid to speak at a state university and whether tax-payer dollars were being used to pay her fee.

It seems like only three months ago that Nevada nutbar Sharron Angle was handily defeated by dull Democrat Harry Reid, but Sharron Angle remembers this moment just like it was last November. She remembers, and she knows America remembers, too.

She knows that in her loss, what really happened is that all of America stood weeping in salute of Our Flag, with a shotgun, and said to themselves, “Sharron Angle, we would totally vote for you if you were running against a negro.” READ MORE »

Have you been very worried about Alaska’s exurban fame monster Sarah Palin? Don’t worry! She crawled out of her winter den and saw her reflection in Greta Van Susteren’s plastic jaw, so this means we’ll have six thousand years of nuclear winter once Palin winds up becoming president (of the Breakaway Republic of Wasilla) in 2012.

What did Palin think of Barack Obama’s popular centrist State of the Union speech? It’s impossible to tell, based on the words falling so loosely from her lips, but she did prove she also doesn’t know how to say the old Internet term “WTF,” which is pronounced “What the Fuck?” (She just spoke the letters, which is a blood libel against Fuck.) Oh yeah, we’ve got the video! And yeah, the Snowbilly is definitely in her “Fat Elvis” final days of narcotic confusion. [Media Matters] READ MORE »

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

UK-based Cella Energy has developed a synthetic fuel that could lead to US$1.50 per gallon gasoline. Apart from promising a future transportation fuel with a stable price regardless of oil prices, the fuel is hydrogen based and produces no carbon emissions when burned. The technology is based on complex hydrides, and has been developed over a four year top secret program at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford. Early indications are that the fuel can be used in existing internal combustion engined vehicles without engine modification.

According to Stephen Voller CEO at Cella Energy, the technology was developed using advanced materials science, taking high energy materials and encapsulating them using a nanostructuring technique called coaxial electrospraying.

“We have developed new micro-beads that can be used in an existing gasoline or petrol vehicle to replace oil-based fuels,” said Voller. “Early indications are that the micro-beads can be used in existing vehicles without engine modification.”

“The materials are hydrogen-based, and so when used produce no carbon emissions at the point of use, in a similar way to electric vehicles”, said Voller.

The technology has been developed over a four-year top secret programme at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, UK.................

Right-Wing Media Attack Obama Address By Taking "Sputnik" Metaphor Literally In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for a new era of innovation by saying "this is our Sputnik moment," referencing the 1960s-era space race that began after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite. Right-wing media attacked Obama's remarks by taking the metaphor literally and criticizing Obama's NASA policy. Read More

Right-Wing Media Embrace Ryan's SOTU Response -- But Economists Disagree Right-wing media have embraced Rep. Paul Ryan's GOP State of the Union response as a "candid, adult-like conversation with the American people" and a "Home Run." But economists have disagreed with several of the claims made by Ryan in his speech, including that the stimulus "failed" and that the health care reform law does not reduce the deficit. Read More

Beck: Progressives Are "Enemies Of God" Glenn Beck recently claimed that his show "hasn't been about hateful rhetoric." But on both his Fox News show and his radio program, Beck routinely goes far beyond criticizing the viewpoints of those who don't share his political ideology; unlike any other well-known political commentator, Beck actually claims his political adversaries are "enemies of God." Read More

Predictable: Right-Wing Media Find SOTU "Boring" Following President Obama's State of the Union address, right-wing media predictably declared his speech speech "boring," "dull," and "flat" -- terms they have consistently used to describe most speeches Obama has given in the past two years. Read More

WorldNetDaily is so desperate to prove President Obama isn't a real American that it will latch onto any shred of evidence that might suggest that, no matter how questionable. It loves to run with claims it hasn't bothered to fact-check beforehand -- remember the "Kenyan birth certificate"?

When a radio interview surfaced of a man who claimed that Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie told him that he couldn't find a copy of Obama's birth certificate in Hawaii state records, WND's Jerome Corsi was quick to pounce, typing up a Jan. 25 WND article breathlessly promoting the audio, making no effort to contact the person to double-check the story.

(Reuters) - Four hundred rabbis will publish a letter on Thursday calling on Fox News to sanction host Glenn Beck for repeated use of Nazi and Holocaust imagery and for airing attacks on World War Two survivor George Soros.

In an open letter to Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp which owns Fox, the rabbis also demand an apology from Fox News chief Roger Ailes for characterizing Beck's Jewish critics as nothing more than "left-wing rabbis."

The letter will appear as an advertisement in the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal on Thursday for which the rabbis spent more than $100,000, a spokesman said.

A Fox News spokeswoman did not immediately comment.

In the letter, the rabbis cited "unacceptable attacks" by Beck against Soros, a billionaire financier who grew up in Nazi-occupied Hungary and is a frequent target of conservative commentators.

"And George Soros used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off," Beck said in November...........................

“In case you were wondering, this is what Michele Bachmann looked like during the State of the Union address.” We were! And look: It’s that same vacant, devil-tranced stare she exhibited in her speech last night. We’ve figured it out. Not only is this person blind to history and other facts, she is also literally blind. READ MORE »

A few months ago, ThinkProgress launched a series of investigations into relationship of the right flank of the Supreme Court — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia — with corporate donors and Republican operatives. In October, we revealed, through a document obtained from Koch Industries, that Scalia and Thomas had attended secret right-wing fundraisers organized by Charles Koch to coordinate political strategy. ThinkProgress has now discovered more events attended by conservative Supreme Court justices.

The Manhattan Institute, funded by major corporations like CIGNA, Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, is a conservative think tank in New York that produces right-wing policy papers as well as sponsoring speeches for judges and Republican politicians. In 2008, Justice Thomas headlined the Manhattan Institute’s Wriston Lecture; last October, Justice Alito was the headline speaker for the same event. According to the Manhattan Institute’s website, an individual must contribute between $5,000 to $25,000 to attend the Wriston Lecture. “To be invited to the Wriston Lecture,” Debbie Ezzard, a development official at the Manhattan Institute told ThinkProgress, “you have to give $5,000.”

During the question and answer period of the Wriston Lecture, Roger Hertog, a major neoconservative donor, asked Alito if he would attend the 2011 State of the Union. Ironically, Alito — while speaking at a political fundraiser filled with powerful conservative donors — said he would avoid the event because it has “become very political”:

HERTOG: My question has nothing to do with judicial philosophy. It’s a more mundane question. It’s a calendar question. Will you attend the State of the Union this year?

ALITO: I said in my talk that judges learn primarily from experience, and I’ve found the example of those with greater experience. For many years, the more senior members of the Supreme Court — Justice Stevens before he retired, Justice Scalia — stopped the practice of attending State of the Union addresses because they have become very political events and they’re very awkward for the justices. We have to sit there like the proverbial plotted plant most of the time and we’re not allowed to applaud or those of us who are more disciplined refrain from manifesting any emotion or opinion whatsoever...............................................

As Media Matters noted over the weekend, the Wilmington Journal in Ohio recently reported that Glenn Beck has yet to make good on his pledges to make big donations to the struggling Ohio town. Did Beck, who earns $32 million annually, misplace his checkbook, or has he had second thoughts about honoring his pledge?

You'll recall in December, Beck made a big media push by traveling to Wilmington and broadcasting his syndicated radio show and his Fox News television show from the middle-class town in hopes of raising awareness about his unemployment struggle.

Even more upsetting now is the news that, to date, Beck has stiffed Wilmington in terms of the charitable donations he and his producers claimed the host would make following his widely publicized visit. Incredibly, last week when the Wilmington Journal tried to get answers about the no-show donations, the paper was ignored by Beck's producers.

It's possible that Beck will one day honor his word and make the donations, but right now this looks really, really bad.

From the Journal [emphasis added]:

Beck's live television broadcast at the Murphy Theatre sold out all 860 seats at $125 apiece. By that count, the box office income alone could have exceeded $100,000. (Producers from the Glenn Beck Program did not return phone calls or email messages seeking comment or clarification.) And an early morning breakfast with the talk-show host cost 70 of his fans $500 a plate.

Danny Mongold, the president of the Murphy board of trustees, said he received a check from Beck's production team last week covering the rental fee for the theater. The city was paid $10,780 for police overtime and other related costs, Curliss said.

So, for the live TV broadcast Beck banked more than $100,000 in ticket sales. (Question for Fox News execs: Do you often allow hosts to charge fans money to attend a Fox News taping?) Then there was the VIP breakfast with Beck banked another $35,000. Pretty simple, right? Beck should take all that money, subtract the cost of the theater rental and the police overtime, and write a big check to Wilmington and various local charities. I'd say $100,000 sounds fair.

But that actually only represents a portion of the money Beck pulled in that day while he was, in theory, trying to help a town racked with high unemployment. Beck also sold tickets to the live radio broadcast from Wilmington that day, which Media Matters pointed out at the time, did not sell out. But let's say that Beck sold half the theater for the radio show. That would represent another $50,000 in box office income. And then don't forget Beck also staged a one-man "Christmas" performancein Wilmington, which came after his TV show was taped in town. That did sell-out, which means Beck banked another $100,000, or so.

Do you get the picture? Beck swooped into Wilmington supposedly on a mission of good will. But during his one day in town he likely generated nearly $300,000 in revenue from ticket sales. That's okay, his handlers insisted at the time, because the money's going to charities to help Wilmington's down-on-their-luck residents.

Except that one month later none of that money has gone to charity, and Beck's producers aren't answering any questions.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, the Democrat-turned-Republican who served as George W. Bush's lieutenant and won his third term last year, wants you to think he's not a fan of federal bailouts.

Yet, on the same day "Texans for Rick Perry" launched their "No Government Bailouts" campaign, Perry himself was lining up with the rest of the states asking for billions in federal funding from President Barack Obama's Recovery Act.

Despite having $9.1 billion in surplus in a so-called "rainy day fund," Texas faced a $6.6 billion budget deficit in the 2010-11 fiscal years. To fill that gap, the state took $6.4 billion from the Obama administration and declared their budget gap covered, freeing up the Republicans who dominated the legislature to run on their fiscal responsibility.

Beck Obsession: The "Riots In Greece" Are Coming "Ashore" Glenn Beck lashed out at The New York Times for highlighting recent Beck-inspired death threats made against Francis Fox Piven, rather than reporting on "strikes and riots" in Greece. This is just the latest example of Beck's ceaseless fearmongering that violent rioting in Greece will be replicated in the U.S. Read More

Did Steve Moore Read The NABE Survey He Discussed On Fox? Responding to a NABE survey anticipating improvements in employment, Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal said on Fox News that the tax cut extension was a major factor in the recovery and that the stimulus had a "negative" effect. But the NABE survey itself found that most respondents do not think the tax cut extension will spur hiring, and independent economists have said the stimulus boosted GDP and employment. Read More

Beck Fearmongers About Gov't Drug Research Center Glenn Beck responded to a report that the federal government will invest $1 billion in creating a research center for new medicines by fearmongering that government "incompetence" makes him "concerned" that it will be "in charge of our life-saving drugs." In fact, most important drug development is done with the help of public-sector research, and the center is intended to encourage private investment and will not compete with the private sector. Read More

Fox Gears Up For SOTU By Questioning Obama's Sincerity Leading up to President Obama's State of the Union address, Fox & Friends repeatedly questioned Obama's sincerity by asking, "What's behind his move to the center?" and claiming that he's trying "to make sure he gets re-elected," because "he understands that's the popular thing to do." Fox & Friends also repeatedly asked if "the American people [will] buy what he sells" in the speech. Read More

Here’s something that won’t surprise anyone, but is still disgusting and horrible: Alaska is America’s Capital of Rape! Sexual assault is basically the main activity, following “drinking for seven or eight days straight because you can’t tell if it’s day or night” and “buying meth in the WalMart parking lot after buying pot and Taco Bell from the Taco Bell drive-thru” and “buying Oxycontin from Levi’s mom to come down.” Alaska!

It’s America by Heart Force! Nearly half of Alaskan women say they’ve been beat up by their man (or woman?) and 37% say they’ve been raped. This is kind of incredible. If Alaska was a foreign nation instead of America’s mosquitoes & ice correctional colony, Bush would’ve invaded to protect their human rights! (And Cheney would’ve bombed every town to ruins — bombed into more “ruins” than Alaskan towns are right now, we mean.) READ MORE

There appears to be some growing consensus among some of the political elite that there should be major regressive changes to Social Security, like cutting back on benefits and/or raising the retirement age. Building on this consensus, Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) are expected to release legislation soon that would involve raising the retirement age to 69. Yet a new poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP) finds that one group that does not support these regressive cuts is the American people themselves. The PPP poll found that 77 percent of Americans would rather “pay Social Security taxes on salaries above $106,800,” essentially lifting the income tax cap, instead of seeing their “benefits cut and the retirement age increased to age 69.” Surprisingly, however, even 67 percent of self-identified Tea Partiers said they would rather raise the tax cap than cuts benefits and hike the retirement age:

Currently, workers pay social security payroll taxes on up to $106,800 of their salary. To ensure the long-term viability of Social Security, would you rather have people pay social security taxes on salaries above $106,800, or would you rather see benefits cut and the retirement age increased to age 69?

Those who advocate for raising the Social Security retirement age often claim that they are pursuing “moderate” paths for reform. As this poll and others demonstrate, the course they are choosing is far from centrist....................................

WASHINGTON – Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said the United States was founded on racial and ethnic diversity and that the founding fathers were responsible for abolishing slavery.

Speaking at an event sponsored by Iowans For Tax Relief, Bachmann hailed the "different cultures, different backgrounds, different traditions" of the early European settlers in America, adding that the "color of their skin" or "language" or "economic status" didn't preclude them from seeking happiness.

"Once you got here, we were all the same," she said. "Isn't that remarkable? It is absolutely remarkable."

The Minnesota Republican called slavery an "evil" and "scourge" and "stain on our history."

"But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States," Bachmann added, claiming "men like John Quincy Adams... would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."

Slavery was an institution in the United States for generations after its founding in 1776, largely due to a compromise between the founders that established African-Americans as three-fifths of a person. Several of the founding fathers themselves held slaves.......................

Monday, January 24, 2011

UPDATED REPORT: Fox News' $55 Million Presidential Donation Last year, five potential Republican presidential candidates (Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, John Bolton, and Rick Santorum) who also serve as Fox News contributors or hosts appeared on the network for more than 85 hours. Media Matters for America estimates this time to be worth approximately $54.7 million in free advertising. Read More

Varney Falsely Blames State Budgetary Woes On Pensions On Fox News' America Live, Fox Business host Stuart Varney falsely claimed that pensions are the "biggest reason" states are facing budget shortfalls and that pensions "are one of the biggest expenses [states] have." In fact, short-term budgetary challenges facing states are the result of the financial crisis, not pensions, and current pension obligations account for just 3.8 percent of the average state's yearly expenditures. Read More

WSJ Falsely Suggests GOP Abortion Bill Is Consistent With Current Law Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal claimed that because President Obama said the health reform law will respect previously-existing restrictions on federal funding for abortion, he should support Republicans' "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." In fact, the health care law is consistent with existing restrictions on federal funding for abortion, and the GOP bill goes far beyond those restrictions. Read More

Right-Wing Media Invent Controversy Over Pianist's Performance At State Dinner Right-wing media have seized on the performance of a Chinese song by pianist Lang Lang at a recent state dinner as an "anti-American" slight against the U.S. In reality, Lang said he picked the song "for no other reason but for the beauty of its melody," and one expert on Chinese culture called it "nutty" to suggest that Lang's performance was somehow "anti-American." Read More

The federal office charged with investigating improper political activity within the federal government comes out this evening with a report -- more than fours years later -- finding that the Bush White House violated the law in the 2006 election campaign.

Still bummed out over America’s comedic loss of Christine O’Donnell? Relax! There’s always another Top Tier Clown to provide the laughs in every election cycle. And the 2012 Humor Olympics have already begun because George Allen will announce today that he’s running for the Senate in Virginia, in 2012!

Just six years after this racist buffoon was laughed off the political stage, he is “making a comeback” — this means he will carry a football around for the next two years straight, often while wearing cowboy boots, saying “Reagan” a lot, and sometimes even riding an alive horse.

It was the weird “Old Europe” anti-negro slur macaca that ruined his re-election attempt in 2006, but the real beauty of that minor moment was the way it revealed a whole lifetime of the kind of ugly, deeply racist frat-boy crap you would generally expect from an old white southern rich twit but that isn’t really acceptable these days in states like Virginia, with its whole northern half filled with semi-modern people who have college degrees and hybrids and most of their teeth. READ MORE »

Did these two men, Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, have a shocking and undisclosed conflict of interest when they ruled on the Citizens United case -- which opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate political spending?

Sign our petition calling for a Justice Department investigation of whether Scalia and Thomas should have recused themselves from the Citizens United case because of their participation in secret political strategy meetings with Koch Industries!

January 22, 2011 - A year ago today, the Supreme Court issued its bizarre Citizens United decision, allowing unlimited corporate spending in elections as a form of “free speech” for the corporate “person.” Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the dissent, had the task of recalling the majority to planet earth and basic common sense.

"Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires," wrote Stevens. "Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.".......................

In this corner, a libertarian, tea party hero who ran several campaigns as a candidate for US president on the Republican ticket. And in that corner, a progressive icon of the left who also ran several campaigns for the US presidency but on the Green Party ticket.

One might think the two men, seemingly ideologically opposed to one another, would rather argue than help one another.

However, on Wednesday's broadcast of Freedom Watch on the Fox Business channel, Judge Napolitano sat down for an amiable interview with Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Ralph Nader to discuss a progressive-libertarian alliance in the 112th session of respective chambers in Congress...............

Federal judges and justices are required by law to disclose their spouse’s income — thus preventing persons who wish to influence the judge or justice from funneling money to them through their husband or wife. Yet, as the Los Angeles Times reports, Justice Clarence Thomas has not complied with this requirement for years:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife’s income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday.

Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation’s IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled “none” where “spousal noninvestment income” would be disclosed. [...]

Virginia Thomas also has been active in the group Liberty Central, an organization she founded to restore the “founding principles” of limited government and individual liberty.

In his 2009 disclosure, Justice Thomas also reported spousal income as “none.” Common Cause contends that Liberty Central paid Virginia Thomas an unknown salary that year.

This revelation that Justice Thomas failed to comply with his disclosure obligations comes as he is caught up in another ethics scandal regarding his participation in fundraisers for far-right political groups. Thomas once attended a gathering of wealthy corporate activists convened by billionaire Charles Koch to raise money for right-wing political causes, and he also attended at least one fundraiser hosted by the far-right think tank that used to employ his wife.

Worst of all, today’s revelation that Justice Thomas has been submitting incomplete financial disclosures suggests that the conservative justices’ engagement with corporate political advocacy could be much more widespread than previously believed. If the justices are not disclosing their activities, it’s anyone’s guess what they could be hiding.